CHAPTER X
EPIDEMIC OF 1866

While Generals Lee and Grant were having their interview at the McLean house the Mohammedan Pilgrims, infected with cholera, were arriving at the Red Sea ports on their way to the great twelfth-year festival to take place May 4 at Mecca. Nothing was further from the minds of those at the McLean house on that memorable April 9, 1865, than the storm gathering in the far-off East. Still, if fortune could be said to have smiled once on our unhappy land during this whole unfortunate period, it was when she decreed that the events which happened at the McLean house should take place before the epidemic reached American shores.

The medical history of the war reveals the prevalince of filth-borne disease and indicates the havoc that might have been played had the eastern storm found our soldiers in camp or in the field. During the years of the war the Union Army had an aggregate of 2,335,942 men. Among them were recorded 3,233,911 cases of and 91,173 deaths from so called malarial and intestinal diseases-largely malaria and typhoid fever. If we add to these figures those of the two navies and of the Confederate Army and consider the vicissitudes of camp life, the campaigns, and the hospitals of the day and remember the violence, of the cholera under such conditions, the results of such a visitation could scarcely be pictured

Before the Confederate soldiers had reached their homes the pilgrim hordes, leaving 30,000 victims behind, were dispersing from Mecca carrying with them the seeds of the scourge. Improved water transportation had so speeded up travel over the Mediterranean route that the scourge this time arrived first at the Western European ports and spread inland. Before midsummer it was at Marseilles, London, Havre and Paris. On its journeys two landmarks of world progress were encountered; it passed De Lesseps' men as they were nearing the completion of the Suez Canal; it saw the laying of the last link of the transatlantic cable from Valencia, Ireland, to Hearts Content, Newfoundland, which connected the capitals of Europe with those of America.

Invasion of America was expected; European ports were quite generally infected, and the transportation of emigrants was still an enterprise of transatlantic commerce. The Metropolitan Board of Health, of New York, was granted extraordinary powers, and the city was thoroughly cleaned in anticipation of the arrival of the scourge. The Health Officer or the port early began to detain at quarantine all vessels from infected ports and before the first of the year had so detained thirty-six ships.

The Atalanta, an English iron mail steamship, was the first vessel known to bring the cholera to an American port, in 1866. This ship left London October 10 and, making Havre the next day, took on 4 10 emigrants as steerage passengers, all of whom were from or had' passed through cholera-infected districts. She sailed for New York, and the first day out a person who had stayed at an infected hotel in Havre died of the scourge. Soon the disease spread among the passengers. Before the ship reached New York, on November 2, sixty cases and fifteen deaths Had occurred. On arrival forty-two cases were removed to the quarantine hospital-ship, where eight died. On the Atalanta, still at quarantine, the disease continued for two weeks but, ten days after the last case, the baggage having been aired and fumigated, the passengers were allowed to land in the city.

Four other ships carrying cholera-infected emigrants arrived before the first of the year, all from Havre. The Hermani landed on November 26, after having lost seven passengers from cholera. The Celia, reaching port on November 20, reported no sickness on the voyage. The Mary Ann docked on December 12 and reported five cholera deaths, but claimed none had occurred for thirty days. There is nothing to indicate detention of any of these vessels except the Atalanta, and there was apparently some difference of opinion as to diagnosis. The report of the Board of Health refers to an epidemic of choleraic diarrhoea in the immigrant hospital On Ward's Island, but Dr. Ford said "It was my opinion at the time that these cases were Asiatic Cholera." Undoubtedly cholera was at New York in the fall of '65, but it was soon suppressed by the cold weather.

But in the spring the arrival of reenforcements from Europe was not long delayed. The steamship England on the 28th day of March, sailed from Liverpool for New York with 1,185 German and Irish emigrants, seventeen saloon passengers, and a crew of 122 officers and men. When four days at sea a German boy died of cholera. Two days later a storm drove all steerage passengers below and the hatches were battened down; after two nights the storm quieted, the hatches were opened, and it was found that another had died and many were sick. The distressing conditions on board, a few days later, led the captain to put in at Halifax for medical aid; the ship landed on April 9 with 160 cases, and 46 deaths had already occurred.

To meet the emergency the old ship Pyramus was fitted up as a hospital and the sick were removed into it, but the deaths continued at the rate of twenty-five a day. The well were landed and housed in tents; the saloon-passengers and crew remained on the England, and, while among the latter some cases had occurred, none sickened after reaching Halifax. The England "having been scraped, scrubbed and fumigated" finally arrived at New York on April 20, after having lost nearly one-fourth of her passengers. At the port all infected ships were allegedly subjected to a twenty-two day quarantine, and apparently no further cases occurred.

Reaching quarantine just two days ahead of the England, the steamship Virginia, from Liverpool, brought 1,029 emigrants. On the passage thirty eight died of cholera and forty-six were ill on arrival The sick were removed to the hospital-ship and the well were subjected to quarantine. During the year eighteen cholera ships arrived with 8,491 passengers and crews, among whom 872 deaths occurred.

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